Featured Tesla Model 3 now costs as little as $23K in California thanks to tax credits

you & me both.

Tesla isn't/wasn't the only or even the 1st company that had switching power supplies built into their portable EVSE's - included w/ the purchase of their cars. The Prius, as well as Chevy Volts (probably other manufacturers that also sold phev's in Europe), & fords, to my knowledge. Several threads here on PC talk about & confirm success with adapting a 240v plug onto their stock portable evse.

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Yes, I was aware of the dual voltage capability of the Toyota L1 EVSE. I was just not aware of the fact that Tesla came with EVSE that can change the voltage. From my quick reading on the Tesla site, it sounded like they no longer provide the charging cord, and they sell a Wall Connector home charger that seems to be 240V only EVSE. So, I thought it was only capable of accepting 240V L2 EVSE.

 

I actually have two dual voltage, portable EVSEs. I bought all of the available plug interfaces that automatically limit the maximum current. The other is for her BMW i3-REx with a current limit setting button. I tested it with my Tesla, $108 on an eBay auction.

Bob Wilson

 

Don't know if Tesla stopped selling the mobile connector. There does seem to be a page that pops up from the web. The mobile connector is an odd duck. It has been derated over the years. Kept our gen 1 version when we sold our Model S in 2017.



It could put out 9.6kW, whereas later versions would put out 7.7kW.

 

However, I imagine the fuel savings in Ca. is a good point, mainly for Cali. A little hard to imagine why anyone in Ca does not at least own a good hybrid..

None of this works too well in Virginia where we have no incentives, in fact our annual car tax is a disincentive for new cars, Nonetheless we suddenly have a decent Model 3 population.

 

well, on either side of the hybrid/ev owners, you have the people that can't afford one, and the people who don't care about the price of gas or the environment

 

The Model 3 RWD onboard charger is 7.7kW. The mobile connector is 7.7kW, but there is a corded model that has a hard wired 14-50 plug that can do 9.6kW. I'm guessing they limited the one as a safety precaution with the swappable plugs; another potential loose connection.

The other cars have 11.5kW chargers that need a 60 amp circuit. Very unlikely to find such an outlet to simply plug into.

 

Yes, individual electricity & gas costs will always affect the immediate financial calculations.
For me, my cost for electricity is $0.015 cents/KWh (and will be for the next ~25 years). Gas here is ~$3.59/Gallon.
So a Prime driven as yours would cost about 0.3 cents/mile under electric vs 5 cents/mile under gas.

 

A good PUC is one of the things we worked really hard on in Minnesota. Places with poor PUCs tend to have higher, or even uncontrolled costs, or outages (see Texas as another example of this).

In general though, people have more control over their state's PUC than federal level posts. But very few people are aware of the importance of their PUC.

 

ours too, and we just accept it

 

Only 50% increase?

Depends on the timestamp, our electricity rate here has increased by 300%- 1000% in the last couple of years.. (let's say pre-pandemy)
And our region loves electricity car, probably the highest EV penetration in the world.

 

A 1000% percent increase in electric prices here in the USA would mark the end of the EV.

I know everyone else is different in the USA. But for an example, if I were to buy a house or have to find a different place to rent in my area, I'd be spending some 50% of my income on housing. A person could very easily spend 25% of their income on food, but cooking at home it becomes closer to 12%. Heating, phone, internet and electricity is around 10%. So we have 28% left for health, clothing, car and misc. The insurance, maintnenance, car payments and fuel on our car, which is used and you can't find a car this cheap anymore is costing me nearly that entire 28%. An EV is currently out of the question because the payments and insurance would be way too expensive, but at least the fueling would be around 1/3 that of the ICEV, so hopefully some day I'll be able to get a used EV for cheap and save money. But if electricity were 1000% more, then it would cost nearly triple, or close to 30% of my income just to charge it, meaning even if the EV were free, and insurance on it were free and maintenance on it were free, it would still be more expensive than an ICEV!

 

Yeah, but that's assuming the gas price stays the same. What if the gas price hiked just as much as or more than the electricity rate does, as it happened in our area during the last 2-3 years. Historically in our region, gasoline was cheaper fuel than electricity for driving. That changed when the gas price went above $5/gal last year. The same can happen and maybe even more drastic next time than a 66% increase last year from $3/gal to $5/gal.

BTW, our PUC just approved the increase on the "Stranded Costs" charged by the utility to cover the cost other than transmission and distribution (and supply but this part is already deregulated in our state, so I don't have to pay to the utility for the supply cost). The fee is used to cover the cost of repair of the grid due to storms or other events and also covers increased incentives for renewable energy sources. Yep, green solar energy is costing every ratepayer to cover the incentive. After the increase, our electricity bill will go up ~15%. With the gas price staying around $3.50, for my PHEV, the EV mode will be costing ~$0.50 more for daily 40 miles of the drive. I already knew the EV does not save fuel costs in our region from the last 6 years of driving a PHEV, but I charged my car despite costing more than driving in a pure HV mode. And I plan to keep charging our PHEV and drive as much in EV mode even after the rate increases. For us, the monthly distance driven is less than 1000 miles, so the cost increase by driving on the electron is still less than $10/mo more after the recent rate hike compared to driving on gas.

Oh, also, if you are paying only 10% of your income on Heating, phone, internet, and electricity, then you are doing OK. Our energy cost (electricity and heating oil) is the second highest category on the non-discretionary expenses below housing cost (mortgage, property tax, home insurance, plus necessary maintenance), although food sometimes comes close to or exceeds it from time to time.

 

jow does your electric rate compare to petrol, as in, cost per km?

 

Charing is still cheaper than petrol (most of the time, except rare occasions when utility rate went bananas and you need fast charging in the charging station.. Here the strange thing is petrol price changes at least twice a day, roughly before and after 12:00 in the noon.

Hard to compare a used 2010 prius with EV, right? The perk of EV includes, but not limits to: use of bus/taxi line, free or very low yearly fee, lower registration fee.. but the market value of an EV depreciates quite fast..
Some affluent people go for leasing..

 

btw, for a very short period of (marketing) time, Tesla here offered 0.99% car loan rate...

 

there are some great deals here on model3 before an updated version is released